With much of the Southwest baking under record temperatures, immigrant rights advocates worry that President Joe Biden’s decision to effectively close the border to asylum seekers for the foreseeable future will endanger lives and further marginalize. climate displaced people seeking asylum in the US
Their concerns come as a heat dome lingered over Mexico and the southwestern United States temperature records obliterated from Phoenix to Sacramento, California. The scorching conditions prompted health officials to urge people to limit their time outdoors and take other steps to protect themselves against a climate charged high pressure system that killed dozens of people in various states in Mexico. The promise of a warmer than average summer raised fears that Biden’s order, which allows the government to suspend border crossings when they exceed 2,500 daily, will lead to an increase in heat-related illnesses and possibly deaths.
“This executive order being issued right now is an additional atrocity that will force more people into dangerous conditions where they are exposed to a truly severe climate impact,” said Ahmed Gaya, director of the Climate Justice Collaborative at the National Partnership for New Americans.
The order Biden signed on June 4 followed mounting calls from Republicans as well as Democrats to curb the flow of migration on the southern border. The statement, what took effect immediately and has already led to it thousands of deportationswill only be lifted when the seven-day average of encounters between ports of entry from Mexico falls below 1,500 per day, something the Associated Press reports hasn’t happened since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden’s decision to drastically regulate a legal path into the country for the bulk of migrants at the southern border, with limited exceptions such as unaccompanied minors, is “clearly a political stunt,” Gaya said. “Given the fact that many of the people at the border have climate that is the main cause of their migration and need to seek safety, they are now forced at the border to wait in limbo indefinitely while their asylum is closed under this order. , and be exposed to severe climate impacts that put their lives at risk,” he said.
Dangerous heat already poses a deadly threat to many at the border. Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, in El Paso identified four people, believed to be migrants, who died of heat-related illnesses while crossing the border. as reported by the Guardian. Past few years record temperatures believed to have contributed to more than 100 deaths in the same area. Some immigration advocates are concerned the administration’s edict will create a even worse environment for asylum seekers.
“This policy’s implementation clashes with the hottest, most dangerous months on record as the climate crisis continues to accelerate,” said Kim Nolte, CEO of Migrant Clinicians Network. “We fear that this policy will lead to more deaths as desperate people are pushed further and further into remote and deadly hot areas to cross the border.”
Previous research on the risks of climate migration facing people around the world suggests that this may well be the case. “As temperatures rise, we will absolutely see higher mortality, disease, death and injury for these asylum seekers coming to the US to seek safety,” said Anne Junod, a senior research fellow at the Urban Institute who studies climate migration.
The Biden administration’s brief is “actually more extreme” than similar policies Trump administration enactedand just as unlikely to hold up in court, said Sarah Rich, senior supervising attorney and interim senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center. (The American Civil Liberties Union has announced his intention to sue the Biden administration over the order.)
Border Patrol agents did already started to return migrants at the international border to prevent them from reaching American soil – a revival of a controversial Trump-era policy to physically block asylum seekers from entering the country, which is required to claim asylum.
In addition to barring entry, Biden’s proclamation denies asylum to anyone entering between ports, raises the legal standards required to receive asylum, and gives those seeking it only four hours to prepare for their initial interview, including efforts to contact and consult legal counsel, according to Ryk. This also means that the only way to be granted asylum in the US is to make an appointment via the CBP One appwhich can take months and is “essentially a lottery system,” she said.
According to Rich, the immigrant rights community in the US is collectively opposed to the Biden administration’s latest executive action. “We are upset. We are disappointed. Many people are outraged by this. It feels like a real betrayal,” she said.
Others are also concerned about what this means for the push to allow people displaced by climate change to seek refugee status in the US, especially for a president who just three years ago signed an executive order the government instructs to examine the impact of climate change on migration.
One of the first actions of the Biden administration that took office was to make climate-related migration a priority, Gaya noted, but the administration has since moved in the opposite direction. “It goes further down the wrong path, in the wrong direction, by cutting off more avenues for people seeking asylum, often on grounds that include climate impacts, to do so,” he said. “This executive order is both a deep disappointment to President Biden’s immigration promises, as well as to his hopes to be a climate leader.”
